Humans are historically hunter/gatherers, but over the centuries we’ve hunted less and gathered more. To be specific we’ve ‘hunted’ for parking spaces and ‘gathered’ a whole lot of cardboard boxes. Realizing the quality of the gifts and other items we purchase, we actually need to ‘save the box’. Note: Pointing and clicking is way easier than wading into the mall traffic.
The importance of cardboard to our culture is, on a par with space travel and the technology that allows us to speak to and see someone on the remote island of Tonga on our smart phone. All we need to do is find someone in Tonga willing to speak to us.
Raw cardboard fresh from the factory is, by itself, benign, but configured into box form it houses those niceties of our civilization such as flat screen TV’s, auto parts and candy.
Cardboard, neither card, nor board, but somewhere in between, is ubiquitous and while utile, can also mislead. Let me explain.
The packaging of an item on the shelf of a gourmet food emporium, for example, is a beautifully constructed package of individual almond Rocha, and is more likely to be sold if we fall for the packaging. In this era of less is more, those who sell us things are more likely to increase the size of the package and decrease its content.
Let’s say a given package which is 10 inches long by 2 inches wide by 1 inch deep looks like it could contain as many as 10 or 15 Almond Rocha’s with a number of them pictured on the package. In actuality, it only contains 2. Why? The package is the selling point. Remember those little disclaimers that say, some settling of contents may occur? That’s a ruse! It’s like big government; you expect a fair shake, but don’t get a lot. It’s almost as if the packaging is more important than the product.
Go to any estate sale and off in a corner of the garage is a pile of designer boxes that one could never throw out. While in the throes of a shopping spree and ‘on’ a cup of Cuban coffee to keep going, you look at the ruffled red ribbon and golden wrapped nugget of marketing skill and you start to think if the person you’re buying it for actually deserves it. OF COURSE THEY DON’T but it’s Christmas time and what the hell! You’ll probably have 18 months to pay it off with no payments until August of 2028. We’re not talking about Whitman’s Samplers here!
In a business course somewhere in a college close to a large city that caters to self-motivated marketing mavens, an un-tenured assistant professor wearing a sleeveless vest, white shirt and bow tie is regaling the students on the value of packaging. That speaks for itself.
The question I’m raising here is what do we do with the box when the computer’s been delivered? Save it. If there’s a problem and we need to send it back, you need the original box, but we do that. We’re ‘savers’ and taken to the next level, American’s are ‘stuff junkies’ which you can see from the great amount of ‘store your stuff’ facilities.
What do we see in the chain link cages which make up these compendiums of crap? Cardboard boxes! Still not broken down flat so as to save space, most are still in their original configuration because we haven’t figured out the tab ‘A’ into slot ’B’ thing yet, which means we’re storing air, not density. We’ve probably saved more cardboard than the law allows, and, it seems, we’ve created a whole industry dedicated to it. We can recycle it into coffee cup sleeves or bus benches, or we can continue to store it in case civilization breaks down and we have to send the product back. Then we’ll go to Tonga, where cardboard is as rare as an individual almond Rocha.
